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  "description": "NoSQL is an umbrella term for databases that depart from the strict relational, SQL-based, table-and-row model. The category emerged in the late 2000s as web-scale applications needed horizontal scaling and flexible schemas that traditional relational systems struggled to provide. NoSQL is not a single technology but four broadly recognised families.\n\n\nThe four families\n\n * Document. JSON-like documents with flexible schema. Examples: MongoDB, Couchbase, Firestore, DynamoDB (in document mode).\n ",
  "path": "/engineering-glossary/nosql-non-relational-database/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-12T18:46:33.000Z",
  "site": "https://sahilkapoor.com",
  "tags": [
    "MongoDB",
    "PostgreSQL",
    "Redis",
    "Document Database",
    "SQL",
    "ACID",
    "The Cost of SQL Habits on MongoDB Infrastructure"
  ],
  "textContent": "**NoSQL** is an umbrella term for databases that depart from the strict relational, SQL-based, table-and-row model. The category emerged in the late 2000s as web-scale applications needed horizontal scaling and flexible schemas that traditional relational systems struggled to provide. NoSQL is not a single technology but four broadly recognised families.\n\n## The four families\n\n  * **Document.** JSON-like documents with flexible schema. Examples: MongoDB, Couchbase, Firestore, DynamoDB (in document mode).\n  * **Key-value.** Pure key-to-value lookup, often in memory. Examples: Redis, Memcached, DynamoDB (in key-value mode), Riak.\n  * **Column-family.** Sparse, wide tables grouped into column families, optimised for write-heavy and analytical reads. Examples: Cassandra, ScyllaDB, HBase, Bigtable.\n  * **Graph.** Nodes and edges with first-class traversal queries. Examples: Neo4j, Amazon Neptune, ArangoDB, TigerGraph, Memgraph.\n\n\n\n## What NoSQL trades\n\n  * Often weaker consistency models (eventual or tunable) in exchange for horizontal scaling and availability.\n  * Often weaker joins and transactions in exchange for simpler scaling stories.\n  * Often more flexible schemas at the cost of stricter constraint enforcement.\n\n\n\nModern relational databases have absorbed many NoSQL features (JSON columns, horizontal scaling, multi-region), and many NoSQL systems have added transactions; the boundary is no longer sharp.\n\n🔗\n\n**Related Terms**\nMongoDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, Document Database, SQL, ACID\n\n📖\n\n**Further Reading**\nThe Cost of SQL Habits on MongoDB Infrastructure",
  "title": "NoSQL",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-13T19:11:08.877Z"
}